With his theory of forces Boskovic was a forerunner of modern physics for almost two centuries

Rudjer Boskovic's monument, carved by Ivan Mestrovic, distinguished Croatian sculptor, has been transported from Croatia and placed in Milano, Italy, in February 2017.

Ruðer Bo¹koviæ was the discoverer of the principle of determinism, 56 earlier than Pierre-Simon Laplace.He was the founder of the Astronomical observatory in Brera in Milano.

Summary. Rudjer Boskovic, distinguished Croatian scientist and poet (18th ct.), born in the city of Dubrovnik (Ragusa), is the founder of the astronomical observatory in Brera near Milan. Due to this, Ivan Mestrovic's monument of Boskovic has been transported from Croatia to Italy and placed in Milano in 2017. In 1773, a charter granted by Louis XV made Rudjer Boskovic a French subject. With his theory of forces he was a forerunner of modern physics for almost two centuries. He was the discoverer of the principle of determinism, 56 earlier than Pierre-Simon Laplace.

Solemn unveiling of Boskovic's monument in Milano, Italy.Born in Dubrovnik, Ruðer Bo¹koviæ died in Milano, where was buried in the church of S. Maria Podone.

Croatian postage stamp dedicated to Rudjer Boskovic and his delicate work on the reconstruction of the famous cupola of the Vatican church of St. Peter.

Ruðer Bo¹koviæ, Croatian scientist and poet (writing both in Latin and Croatian), member of the Society of Jesus, as well as of the Royal Society of London, was probably the last European universal genius. He is best known for his monograph Theoria philosophiae naturalis (Vienna, 1758).

A book from the Brera Library in Milano, related to Rugjer Bo¹koviæ and to the city of Dubrovnik

"It was built in the historic Palazzo Brera in 1764 by the Jesuit astronomer Ruggero Boscovich"

Marin Dr¾iæ (Darxich) 1508-1567, Croatian Renaissance writer in Dubrovnik, wrote "Tirena Comedia", published in 1551 in Croatian language, kept in the Brera Library.

The greatest and most famous Croatian philosopher and scientist Rudjer Boskovic (Boscovich, 1711-1787), was born in Dubrovnik, where he was educated in the Jesuit Collegium. He was a member of the Royal Society of London, a member of St.Petersbug Academy, "membre correspondant" of the French Academie Royale des Sciences, a member of the Accademia dell'Arcadia, a professor at many European universities. Very delicate work on repairing the cupola of St. Peter's church in the Vatican (diameter: 42m) was entrusted to R. Boskovic, a proof that he was a leading European authority for static computations and civil engineering of that time. Upon the request of Austrian Empress Maria Theresia, Boskovic was solving the problem of stability of Royal Library (now National Library) in Vienna.

Portrait of Boskovic by the English painter Edge Pine (London, 1760).

He was also the founder of the astronomical observatory in Brera near Milan. In 1773 a charter granted by Louis XV made him a French subject. Soon he was appointed by Louis XV to a very prestigious position and became the Director of Naval Optics of the French Navy in Paris (Optique Militaire de la Marine Royale de France). He left to his adoptive country an achromatic telescope and micrometer. Boskovic spent nine years in France, and became a good friend to many outstanding scientist, like the mathematician Clairaut, Lalande, Buffon. When D'Alembert took him for Italian, he hastened to correct him.

Boskovic stayed 7 months in England and met many famous scientists there: James Bradley (famous astronomer), George Parker (president of the Royal Academy), Samuel Johnson (Lexicographer), Edmund Burke (philosopher and political writer), Joshua Reynolds (the first president of the Royal Academy of Arts), and others. It is interesting that in England he designed a telescope filled with water in all its components, which was implemented at the Greenwich observatory in 1871, that is, 84 years after his death. He also met Benjmanin Franklin, who showed him some of his electrical experiments, see an article by Branko Franolic.

A detail from the Jesuit Collegium where R. Boskovic was educated, 17th century, representing coat of arms of the Kingdom of Croatia, Slavonia and Dalmatia,

Boskovic was also a brilliant Croatian Latinist poet. He wrote an extensive scientific epic De solis et lunae defectibus (On Solar and Lunar Eclipse) published in London in 1760. It contains 5570 Latin verses, and was dedicated to the Royal Society of England whose member he was. In the title one can read "Father r. Boskovic, of the Jesuit Order", although at that time it was forbidden for Jesuits to live and work in England. The epic was written in the manner of Roman classics, in dactilus hexameter.

When Charles Burney, a well known English musicologist, met Boskovic in Milan, he wrote: ...if all Jesuits were like this father, who uses the higher science and the work of mind to advance science for the happiness of mankind, then it were to be wished that this society were as durable as is this world. Boskovic was buried in the church of S. Maria Podone in Milano.

French astronomer Joseph-Jerome de Lalande wrote the following lines in his book Voyage en Italie:

William Thompson-Kelvin, the English physicist (19/20 centuries), once expressed his opinion that his atomic theory is a pure "Boskovicianism." Still earlier, Sir Humphry Davy, professor of physics and chemistry at the Royal Institution in London from 1802 till 1827, mentioned the name of Boskovic on several occasions in his Diary (Commonplace Book), accepting his atomistic theory. The diary is kept in the archives of the Royal Institution in London. Also a famous Irish mathematician and physicist R.W. Hamilton wrote extensively about Boskovic's theory of forces.

With his theory of forces R. Boskovic was a forerunner of modern physics for almost two centuries. It was described in his most important book Theoria Philosophiae naturalis (Vienna 1758, Venice 1763, London 1922, American edition in 1966).

Werner Heisenberg (Nobel prize for physics in 1932) wrote the following:

Among scientists from the 18th century Boskovic occupies outstanding place as a theologian, philosopher, mathematician, and astronomer. His "Theoria philosophiae naturalis" announced hypotheses which were confirmed only in the course of last fifty years.

Indeed, see his graph of regions of attractive and repelling forces between material points (elementary particles), the closest region being repelling, tending to infinity (nuclear force!; see here; published in his Dissertationes de lumine pars secunda, 1748), and the farthest region is repelling, corresponding to gravitational force:

This graph was since 1763 called the Boskovic curve (curva Boscovichiana).

Rudjer Boskovic was the discoverer of the principle of determinisum, 56 earlier than P.S. Laplace. Moreover, Boscovich's approach is more precise, complete and comprehensive than Laplace's.

Robert Marsh, the author of Physics and Poets, credits Boskovic with the idea of FIELD. Faraday and others took the idea from him, see here. He was the first to apply probability to the theory of errors. Laplace and Gauss acknowledged their indebtedness to his work which led to the Legendre principle of least squares in statistics (stating that the best fitting line is the one with the smallest sum of squared residuals).

He was also very active in astronomy and diplomacy. A great many letters sent to his sister and two brothers written in Croatian witness that he did not neglect his mother tongue. So in one of his letters he wrote that in one of European cities he saw soldiers - "our Croats" (nase Hrvate).

He also wrote poetry. Most of his manuscripts are kept in the special Boskovic Archives in the Rare Books library in Berkeley, University of California, USA:

altogether 180 items and including 66 scientific treatises, plus

rich correspondence comprising over 2,000 letters, among others with D'Alambert, Lagrange, Laplace, Jacobi and Bernoulli; he had intense correspondence with his friend Voltaire.

A portrait of Boskovic, published in Milano in 1818 in a collection of famous people living between 18th century the beginning of the 19th. (many thanks to Dr Luca Leoni, Italy, for the photo)

Some of his books, articles and letters, together with other documents, are kept in the famous Franciscan monastery (Samostan Male Brace) in Dubrovnik. Its library possesses 30,000 volumes, 22 incunabula, 1,500 valuable handwritten documents. It was severely damaged in the aggression in 1991/92 (shelled by the Serbian Army - 37 direct hits).

Cornelia Wright (1757-1837), an English writer, in her "Autobiography'' left us important information about Raymund Kunic (Croatian latinist and grecist), whom she met in Rome. She also met Rugjer Boskovic in Paris, whom she admired as a "mathematician and astronomer and as a good Latin poet who like many of his countrymen had the gift of composing Latin verse with facility''. It is very likely due to her acquaintance with Kunic that the first translation of a Croatian poem into English arose (a poem by Ignjat Gjurgjevic, translated into English from its Latin translation).

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